I know it's highly impractical to selectively scan emails in order to comply to a ruling were Google to lose a lawsuit like this one. However, I kinda agree with the Judge's reasoning here. It'll be interesting to see how this proceeds.

I don't like the idea that Google can build up a personal profile based on my emails to other people even when I myself don't use any Google services.

This. I run my own e-mail server. But 50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that. In fact, other than youtube, I use no google services. Switched to searching with bing a couple of years ago, and this sort of shenanigans was the reason why.

I don't like the idea that Google can build up a personal profile based on my emails to other people even when I myself don't use any Google services.

This. I run my own e-mail server. But 50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that. In fact, other than youtube, I use no google services. Switched to searching with bing a couple of years ago, and this sort of shenanigans was the reason why.

Convince her to get a private key. Won't stop them from analyzing metadata or the emails you've already exchanged, but it's better than nothing.

I don't like the idea that Google can build up a personal profile based on my emails to other people even when I myself don't use any Google services.

This. I run my own e-mail server. But 50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that. In fact, other than youtube, I use no google services. Switched to searching with bing a couple of years ago, and this sort of shenanigans was the reason why.

Convince her to get a private key. Won't stop them from analyzing metadata or the emails you've already exchanged, but it's better than nothing.

Convince a girly-girl to get something called a private key? She doesn't think any of this is a problem she needs to worry about, just like most of the rest of Internet. They gave up their privacy for little convenience.

I don't like the idea that Google can build up a personal profile based on my emails to other people even when I myself don't use any Google services.

This. I run my own e-mail server. But 50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that. In fact, other than youtube, I use no google services. Switched to searching with bing a couple of years ago, and this sort of shenanigans was the reason why.

Convince her to get a private key. Won't stop them from analyzing metadata or the emails you've already exchanged, but it's better than nothing.

Convince a girly-girl to get something called a private key? She doesn't think any of this is a problem she needs to worry about, just like most of the rest of Internet. They gave up their privacy for little convenience.

Problem exists between keyboard and chair. Also, I know lots of girls with private keys, they're the best ones to date.

If you send an email to a Gmail server, I'm pretty sure there's implied consent there that the server can read and process the contents of that email.

I can understand an argument being mounted about the privacy implications of Google's automatic profile-generation. But does that really constitute wiretapping, when the data was specifically transmitted to Google's mail servers in the first place? It seems a stretch to me.

"would not have necessarily understood that her e-mails were being intercepted to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements,

That makes sense

Quote:

"Google's theory is that all e-mail users understand and accept the fact that e-mail is automatically processed," not just for advertising but for things like spam filtering, which is vital to running a modern e-mail serviceGoogle described this class action lawsuit as an attempt to "criminalize ordinary business practices.

I don't like the idea that Google can build up a personal profile based on my emails to other people even when I myself don't use any Google services.

This. I run my own e-mail server. But 50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that. In fact, other than youtube, I use no google services. Switched to searching with bing a couple of years ago, and this sort of shenanigans was the reason why.

Convince her to get a private key. Won't stop them from analyzing metadata or the emails you've already exchanged, but it's better than nothing.

Convince a girly-girl to get something called a private key? She doesn't think any of this is a problem she needs to worry about, just like most of the rest of Internet. They gave up their privacy for little convenience.

Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

Not even keyboard an chair. I'm pretty sure this same apathetic attitude toward online privacy (what I don't see can't hurt me?) is what made real-world privacy (and even civil liberties) erosion possible. It's a fairly straightforward leap from apathy to inaction to acceptance.... right until something really bad happens to that particular individual but by then it's too late for them, and there's no help because no one else cares.

50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that.

It's been a while since I've reviewed the actual wiretap act. But it seems silly to require consent. By way of analogy, assume you send a letter to someone with a secretary. That person instructs the secretary to open and read this letter aloud. You may not have known that the secretary was reading your letter, much less consented to that. But it would be silly to say the secretary had illegally intercepted your letter, because the secretary acted with the consent of the recipient.

Likewise, when you send an e-mail to someone using Gmail, it shouldn't matter whether or not you consented. The recipient consented, and that should be enough.

Anyone with half a brain that reads the news already knows that email never dies, and whatever you wrote lives forever and can be used as evidence against you in a court of law. There are even specific email retention laws so that you can have your lawyers slap the other party if they illegally destroy email evidence. The very first thing lawyers do in a case is discovery, which entails going through the email with a fine tooth comb.

50% of all my e-mails are to my girlfriend who uses.... GMail! So half of all my e-mail messages are parsed by Google. I never consented to that.

It's been a while since I've reviewed the actual wiretap act. But it seems silly to require consent. By way of analogy, assume you send a letter to someone with a secretary. That person instructs the secretary to open and read this letter aloud. You may not have known that the secretary was reading your letter, much less consented to that. But it would be silly to say the secretary had illegally intercepted your letter, because the secretary acted with the consent of the recipient.

Likewise, when you send an e-mail to someone using Gmail, it shouldn't matter whether or not you consented. The recipient consented, and that should be enough.

Except that this is more like if the postal service started opening your mail and reading it without one or both parties consent.

My main concern is how this impacts other email providers. If processing email data is seen as "wiretapping", then there are going to be a whole lot of companies guilty of the same offence.

I run an ICT department where we have pretty strict controls over what comes in and out of our mail server. Violent, sexist and obscene content is expressly prohibited (in accordance with our legal obligations to provide a safe workplace), and we have pretty sophisticated filters in place to detect industrial espionage (we're a research business, and we've had plenty of "data leakage" in the past).

So, all email in and out is heavily processed, data is collected on a per-email-address basis, and we manually sift through email that is suspicious, before allowing it to be delivered. All emails are retained indefinitely.

Is this wiretapping? Our employees sign an ICT Policy when they join the company, agreeing to these practices, but there is no way to make every party who transmits data to our mail server agree to the same.

If Gmail is wiretapping, then so are we, and so is basically every company that operates a mail server.

It's not intuitively obvious to anyone sending email to me at "firstname@lastname.org" that they're actually sending email to a Google server to be parsed.

That information is publicly available from the domain's MX records.

An argument could be made that a nontechnical user can't access that information readily - but I'd see that as a software limitation of email clients more than a legal issue. It would be trivial to implement an email feature that displays the details about the receiving mail server before email is sent. There just doesn't seem much demand for the availability of such a feature.

It's not intuitively obvious to anyone sending email to me at "firstname@lastname.org" that they're actually sending email to a Google server to be parsed.

That information is publicly available from the domain's MX records.

An argument could be made that a nontechnical user can't access that information readily - but I'd see that as a software limitation of email clients more than a legal issue. It would be trivial to implement an email feature that displays the details about the receiving mail server before email is sent. There just doesn't seem much demand for the availability of such a feature.

In order to demand such a feature, you have to know it could exist, and if you know that much you probably have enough technical knowledge to check the MX records.

Microsoft is driving this. Microsoft will do whatever possible to take down the competition.

Since when has a court decided allegations against a company who clearly states in its terms and conditions your email is parsed is unlawful?

This will open the flood gates for all TOS and contractual agreements. Finally, I get some peace in mind for not having to read millions of words in the EULA for a simple install for Microsoft Windows Operating System and the hundreds of updates thereafter.

Microsoft, you opened Pandora's box on this one. Your TOS are now null and void.

I'm just guessing, but it seems logical Microsoft is the driver behind this. If not, it's a worthy though

This is a bizarrely stupid case and the judge should not be allowed anywhere near a computer. Google has an unlimited right to do anything they want with data that is sent unrequested to their servers. At no point did Google promise that there would be no automated inspection of content going to their server; in fact, a mail server by definition parses all content going through it. If I run a server, I can damn well dump every bit of traffic to a .gz and publish it on bittorrent if I want.

This case is the stupid, the judge is stupid, and everyone across the table from Google should feel bad.

It's not intuitively obvious to anyone sending email to me at "firstname@lastname.org" that they're actually sending email to a Google server to be parsed.

That information is publicly available from the domain's MX records.

MX records are not intuitively obvious.

What difference does it make? You're sending data out addressed to some server. That server chooses to send it elsewhere, but at no point was there any contract - implied or otherwise - that it wouldn't. Unless you have an agreement with 'lastname.org' about what will be done with your email, you haven't got a leg, foot or toe to stand on.

Even an e-mail sender who read the company's privacy policies "would not have necessarily understood that her e-mails were being intercepted to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements," stated the judge. The plaintiffs in this case haven't consented implicitly or explicitly to have their e-mails scanned, and so the lawsuit can move forward, she ruled.

Missing something here. How are non gmail users having a user profile created for targeted advertisements? Can any of these people prove they got a more targeted ad while on google search or a google site, based on an email they sent to a gmail user?

And this also would spread to Microsoft's Hotmail as well, since they also used targeted advertisements on email before they went to outloook.

And on a more cynical note, this particular judge has her hands full with Apple and Samsung's endless motions - I doubt she actually spent more than 5 minutes on this.